October 25, 2010

Unfairly called the Cherrapunji of the South, Agumbe possesses a lot of its own unique charm and enigmas. Known primarily for the almost unfathomable rain and the clichéd and touristy ‘Sunset Point’, this sleepy town of Malgudi Days fame remains a tiny dot on the highway between Shimoga and Mangalore.

Geographically, the area is a small and low basket in the Western Ghats and consists of very unique flora and fauna. One of the few lowland evergreen forests in the Western Ghats, Agumbe is a naturalist’s dream, offering excitement and discovery at every corner.

This December, Gerry Martin will be taking a group of enthusiasts over to the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station to provide them with a learning experience by getting involved with the various projects that the Research Station is conducting. There will also be skill-building sessions where individuals can learn various techniques in wildlife field biology.

Anyone who is 12 years and above and interested in Nature can attend this workshop. It is open to children and adults. The age range on our workshops has been as large as between 12 and 60 years old! All levels of dialogue, interest and skills are addressed and accommodated.

Accommodation and Logistics:

The group will travel via overnight bus to Agumbe on the 2nd of December. The bus departs from the Majestic Bus Stand in Bangalore at 10 PM. We will be staying in tents at the field station. There is a common dining area and the bathrooms and toilets are permanent structures with hot and cold running water.

We will return early in the morning (usually around 5 AM) on the 6th of December.

For further details or to register, please get in touch with Conan Dumenil. 9449010673/ conan@gerrymartin.in.

October 19, 2010

The Andaman Islands are an almost fabled archipelago with clichéd sun-kissed beaches, blue waters and incredible coral reefs. However, there is a lot more that is spectacular on these islands! There are mangrove forests, intertidal zones and rainforests as well and all these habitats are dependent on each other, as are the flora and fauna that live within them.

We will explore four separate habitats, better understanding the dynamics at play within them and how they affect each other. Along the way, we will build skills in surveying techniques, canopy access, snorkeling and scuba diving.

We’ll be staying at the premier conservation and research body on the islands- The Andaman and Nicobar Environmental Team’s field station and get involved with their experiences, work and endeavors. The field station is located with mangrove forests and inter-tidal zones adjoining it and the five-acre campus is a well-preserved rainforest!

The workshop will encompass a lot of learning skills, experiencing new ecosystems and getting numerous photo opportunities. We’ll see many species that are unique to the islands and some that are adapted specifically to life in island habitats.

One day will be dedicated to snorkeling and another will be spent scuba diving to better experience the coral reefs and also build skills.

ACTIVITIES:

Understanding Island Ecologies

Mangrove walks- Searching for specialized animals

Intertidal Zone- Understanding this unique niche

Visits to the reef

Looking for crocodiles

Herpetofaunal surveys

Photography sessions

Ecology presentations

Canopy access

Snorkeling for marine life

Scuba Diving

Loads of hands on experience

Night surveys

Andaman and Nicobar Islands Environmental Team (ANET)The Andaman and Nicobar islands are a chain of some 300 little known archipelagic islands situated on the eastern rim of the Bay of Bengal. Closely guarded by the Indian Government, they remain a pristine tropical island paradise, complete with stunning coral reefs, crystal blue waters and unspoiled equatorial rainforest. Most extraordinary, many of the islands are a bastion for some of the last remaining aboriginal tribes on earth that continue to shun all contact with the outside world. The Andamanese, as these tribes are collectively known as, inhabit a significant percentage of the islands in fully protected areas that remain completely off limits to the general public.

Shortly after setting up the Croc Bank in the 1970s, the Whitakers realize there were needs for basic herpetological and other ecological work in the then much neglected islands. Over the next several years Rom, together with Satish Bhaskar and Alok Mallick, set about crafting a strategy to effectively address these issues. The Andaman and Nicobar Environmental Team (ANET) was conceived in 1989 and shortly thereafter five acres of land was purchase and a base station constructed in Wandoor, on the southern tip of South Andaman island.
ANET has since carried out extensive work on marine turtles, herpetofaunal biogeography and a host of other biological studies. In addition, ANET has been actively involved in the broader ecological and social spheres including work on natural resource utilization, socioeconomics and the management of protected areas.

As one of the most capable NGOs in the region, ANET played a pivotal humanitarian and disaster relief role in the Nicobar Islands after the infamous 2004 tsunami devastated the region. Today, although still very active in the reptile arena (with a recently described genus of Agamid named at the base to prove it!) ANET has a very broad curriculum of environmental development work, including marine and terrestrial components. ANET is the only environmental research base in the islands and remains one of the Croc Banks most exotic and luxurious projects – our very own Treasure Island!

Program Dates- 22nd to 27th November, 2010.

For further details or to register please get in touch with Conan on 9449010673 (conan@gerrymartin.in)

On a dark night last week a group of animal rights activists in Donegal made their own special contribution to the International Year of Biodiversity. They cut their way into a fur farm and released 5,000 mink . This, within their circles, was considered a clever thing to do. A spokesperson for the Alliance for Animal Rights said: "I commend whoever risked their freedom to do this." The Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade announced that "we fully support what has happened".

Had these people tipped a tanker load of bleach into the headwaters of the river Finn, they would have done less damage. The effects would be horrible for a while, but the ecosystem could then begin to recover. The mink, by contrast, will remain at large for years, perhaps millennia. Like many introduced species, American mink can slash their way through the ecosystem, as they have no native predators, and their prey species haven't evolved to avoid them. Is there anything the animal lovers in Donegal could have done that would have harmed more animals?

But there's a second question raised by this act of preternatural imbecility: what were the mink doing there anyway? In other respects the Irish Republic appears to be a civilised country, in this case it looks barbaric. While the United Kingdom banned fur-farming in 2000, Irish governments have resisted prohibition, to protect a tiny but wildly destructive industry. The republic's five remaining fur farms are the sole source of continuing releases of mink, either through raids or accidents. They are also places of astonishing cruelty, in which intelligent carnivores are confined to cages the size of a few shoeboxes. The Irish government is considering phasing out fur farming in 2012. Until then, its citizens will continue to pay more to eradicate mink than they make from breeding them.

But Ireland is a small player. Two-thirds of the world's mink farming and 70% of its fox farming takes place in other EU countries. Denmark alone produces 40% of the global supply of mink pelts. Feral American mink on the continent are even more damaging than they are here, as they drive out the endangered European mink . The EU's 6,000 fur farms are an affront to the values it proclaims.

This month governments meet at Nagoya, in Japan, to review the Convention on Biological Diversity . It has, so far, been a dismal failure. Perhaps the starkest botch has been their inability or unwillingness to control the spread of invasive species. The stories I am about to tell read like a gothic novel.

Consider, for example, the walking catfish , which is now colonising China, Thailand and the US, after escaping from fish farms and ornamental ponds. It can move across land at night, reaching water no other fish species has colonised. It slips into fish farms and quietly works through the stock. It can burrow into the mud when times are hard and lie without food for months, before exploding back into the ecosystem when conditions improve. It eats almost anything that moves.

Its terrestrial equivalent is the cane toad, widely introduced in the tropics to control crop pests. It's omnivorous and just about indestructible: one specimen was seen happily consuming a lit cigarette butt. Nothing which tries to eat it survives: it's as dangerous to predators as it is to prey. Unlike other amphibians, it can breed in salty water: it's as if it had waddled out of the pages of Karel Capek's novel War With the Newts .

The world's most important seabird colony – Gough Island in the South Atlantic – is now being threatened by an unlikely predator: the common house mouse. After escaping from whaling boats 150 years ago, it quickly evolved to triple in size, and switched from herbivory to eating flesh. The seabirds there have no defences against predation, so the mouse simply walks into their nests and starts eating the chicks alive . Among their prey are albatross fledglings, which weigh some 300 times as much as the mice. A biologist who has witnessed this carnage observed that "it is like a tabby cat attacking a hippopotamus".

On Christmas Island the yellow crazy ant does something similar: it eats alive any animal it finds in its path. It is also wiping out the rainforest, by farming the scale insects that feed on tree-sap. Similar horror stories are unfolding almost everywhere. The species we introduce, unlike the pollution we produce, don't stop when we do. A single careless act (think of the introduction of the rabbit or the lantana plant to Australia) can transform the ecology of a continent.

According to a government report, invasive species cost Britain several billion pounds a year. The global damage they cause, it says, amounts to almost 5% of the world economy. A single introduced species – a speargrass called Imperata – keeps 2 million square kilometres in the tropics out of agricultural production, equivalent to the arable area of the US, while ensuring that the native ecosystem can't regenerate.

In most cases there's a brief period in which an invasive species can be stopped. So you would expect governments to mobilise as soon as the threat appears. But in many parts of the world the policy appears to consist of staring dumbly at the problem while something can be done, then panicking when it's too late. When museum weed (Caulerpa taxifolia) escaped into the Mediterranean from the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco, the authorities responded by bickering over whose fault it was. In 1984, when the invasion was first documented, the weed occupied one square metre of seabed. It could have been eradicated in half an hour. Now it has spread across 13,000 hectares and appears to be uncontrollable.

Australia, the continent that has been hit hardest by introductions, still seems incapable of regulating the trade in dangerous species. As the Guardian's new Biodiversity100 campaign shows, 90 potentially invasive plant species are being sold in nurseries there, while 210 species of aquarium fish can be imported without a licence. The UK has some good policies at home. It spent £10,000 in 2006, for example, on a strategy (successful so far) for excluding the South American water primrose, whose control now costs France several million euros a year. But in its overseas territories – of which Gough island is one – it reacts slowly, if at all.

The mink, the walking catfish, the cane toad, the mutant house mouse, these are potent symbols of humanity's strangely lopsided power. We can sow chaos with a keystroke in an investment bank, one signal to a Predator drone, a seed dislodged from the sole of a boot, a fish tank emptied into a canal. But when asked to repair the mess we've made, we proclaim our impotence. Our challenge this century is to meet our capacity for harm with an equal power for good. We are not, so far, doing very well.